Sour Dough

was feeding my mother dough this morning and had a thought run through my head.... Why am I using cane sugar and not DME?

Anyone got a good reason?

I use regular flour/water to feed my starter, so my question would be why use sugar or DME?

As for a reason not to use DME, it's way more expensive than either cane sugar or flour.

I throw it in for when I have forgotten to feed it kinda like a kick start..... plus I have enough DME laying around that I'm not worried about the cost of a teaspoon of it here and there

There's no reason you can't use it.

aiptasia said:

There's no reason you can't use it.

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Thnx thats what I thought just wanted to make sure my thought process was straight

but why train it up on sugar or dme when it's going to be eating flour on matchday?

I dont "train it up on sugar" but once in a while when I miss a feeding I use it as a booster

I have never heard of using sugar to feed a sourdough starter, but I have used barley malt syrup in bread and it has been great. I keep my starter in the fridge, and feed it the day before I plan to use it with 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup water. If it has been more than two weeks since I last used it I will feed it twice before using it. I have two wild yeast starters that I have had going for at least three years, one wheat and one rye. I also used to have a whole wheat starter, but since just use the other two. I feed the wheat with bread or all purpose flour and the rye with rye flour. I rarely ever add sugar to my bread, only things like sweet rolls, milk rolls, or challah or brioche. Just about every bread I make is flour, yeast, salt, and water.

I wonder how using sugar would perhaps change the flavor profile? Maybe I will split my starter next time and see what using sugar does instead of flour. Might be interesting.

StonesBally said:

I wonder how using sugar would perhaps change the flavor profile?

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me too. as i'm sure you know the profile changes so much depending on the time of the first rise, so i wonder if feeding it sugar (= crack, basically!) will do something. please report back if you find anything interesting!